How the World Works wonders if negative sentiment about trade in the United States will change when consumers in the world's emerging economies replace American shoppers as the engine of the global economy.

Yes, but there's that ugly trade deficit that just won't go away. We don't sell enough stuff to pay for what we buy.

The worst part is that countries that have trade surpluses are using their excess dollars to buy up our assets. In effect, we are mortgaging our country to finance a spree of spending for trinkets.

I meant to paste part of Electro Robot's message into my own, but I was distracted and ended up pasting something else instead. I obviously need more coffee.

Eventually the goods & services we sell are worth more than the cheap shoes we buy.

Really? How far in the future do think "eventually" lies? And how much of the profits will be going to foreign investors when we get there?

In the meantime American companies have to stop trying to compete on cost for low cost items and commodities. Better we make high temperature steel alloys for jet engines than commodity steel I-beams as it were.

No matter what we make, investors demanding more profits will insist on making it overseas where labor is cheaper.

I suppose our standard of living will eventually decline to the point where overseas labor isn't cheaper. I don't like that solution.

So on balance we don't do last generations manufacturing very well. We're much better at the next generations' manufacturing.

Any manufacturing process that is economically significant is, almost by definition, the current generation. As soon as it is earning serious money, the investors will make sure that people overseas are trained to make it properly and more cheaply. Look at how many technologies that we invented are being mass-produced overseas. Look at how many we don't make at all over here any more.

I also think we will soon lose our ability to invent state-of-the-art stuff. The lack of jobs has lead many college students avoid engineering, computer science, and other skills that can readily be found more cheaply overseas.

There will probably always be jobs for some highly-skilled technologists, but I don't think there will be enough of them to sustain our standard of living or ensure our technological future.

In a statement, White House press secretary Dana Perino said, "An article in today's Jerusalem Post about the president's position on Iran that quotes unnamed sources -- quoting unnamed sources -- is not worth the paper it's written on...

But unnamed sources are the basis of much of today's alleged journalism. Is the White House admitting that most of the press is bogus?

Why is it acceptable to engage China, which is a Communist country and has an abysmal human rights record, but not Cuba?

If Cuba had something that could make billionaires even wealthier, Bush would be in Cuba shaking Raul Castro's hand right now.

... that our present predicament might not have been so bad if we'd discouraged the gas guzzlers a little sooner. Auto makers might have made less money, but they wouldn't be stuck with large inventories of vehicles that aren't wanted anymore and a shortage of vehicles they can sell.

We let the free market solve the problem, and this is what we got. The free-market enthusiasts usually don't tell you that the market's "solutions" to problems can be pretty painful.

I don't expect the early results to be much like the final outcome. States with large rural areas seem to shift toward Hillary as the counting goes on. This may be because the more rural sections that are likely to favor Hillary aren't as quick to report their tallies as urban sections that lean more toward Obama.

OK, there are some people who just plain won't vote for Obama, but there are also people who just plain won't vote for Hillary.

To make a compelling argument, you must show that the Obama-dislikers exceed the Hillary-dislikers by a sufficient margin to outweigh Obama's lead in the primaries. Can you do this?

Down the home stretch. And Obama loses Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky by a combined 95 points.

So what? Obama is only 73 delegates short of cinching the nomination, but Hillary still has 256 to go.

I'm sure someone will bring up the issues of Florida and Michigan, but counting Florida as voted won't help Hillary much except by raising the number of delegates needed for a confirmed win. Counting Michigan as voted ain't gonna happen because Hillary herself said it wouldn't count and her main opponent wasn't on the ballot.

If Obama wins the nomination, which of the following scenarios would Hillary prefer:

1) Obama wins the general, which would mean Hillary would have to run against an incumbent from her own party to try again in 2012, or

2) McCain wins the general. Hillary gets to say "I told you so" a lot, and also gets a clear shot for another try in 2012.

I just did a little Google search for "Greg Neubeck". Rather interesting.

... the decline in the value of the dollar? And perhaps that decline has something to do with runaway deficit spending that resulted from Republican fiscal policy and the Iraq war?

... how does Microsoft make money on this deal? I thought that running a search engine was supposed to generate revenue, but this sounds like they lose money on each transaction.

Wait, did I get the scripts mixed up?

I dunno. Were you trying to parody a reich-wing blowhard? If so, I think you got it just right.

"Americans will usually do the right thing, after exhausting all of the possible alternatives."

Winston Churchill